I am instrumenting Android applications using a helper class following the example for Java instrumentation in http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/soot/tutorial/profiler2/profiler2.html.
In my BodyTransformer, I have a static block to load MyCounter class
counterClass = Scene.v().loadClassAndSupport("MyCounter");
Since Soot.Main.main(args) that processes my args (in which I provide -android-jars) is not executed while it is loading MyCounter, Soot cannot find my android jar and gives the error:
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: You are analyzing an Android application but did not define android.jar. Options -android-jars or -force-android-jar should be used.
at soot.Scene.defaultClassPath(Scene.java:455)
at soot.Scene.getSootClassPath(Scene.java:224)
at soot.SootResolver.<init>(SootResolver.java:81)
at soot.Singletons.soot_SootResolver(Singletons.java:802)
at soot.SootResolver.v(SootResolver.java:91)
at soot.Scene.loadClass(Scene.java:667)
at soot.Scene.loadClassAndSupport(Scene.java:653)
at MyBodyTransformer.<clinit>(MyBodyTransformer.java:26)
... 1 more
As a solution, I provided my command line arguments (android jars, soot classpath, prepend classpath and process directory) in my main class, before creating my BodyTransformer. Now, it works.
I would like to ask whether there is a more proper way to solve this problem.
loadClassAndSupport is nor sufficicient. Here is what you should do. In your analysis' main method, before you call Soot's main method add the following:
Scene.v().addBasicClass("MyCounter");
Then within your analysis simply use Scene.v().getSootClass("MyCounter").